I spoke to Turboman recently about Firestorm. The latest scoop is basically, he still intends on finishing and releasing it at some point, life has just hit hard and been super busy. Also side note, we (the beta testers with many different versions of the game like the awesome 2008 beta) will be allowed to release said beta versions of Firestorm AFTER the final version is completed and released, words from Turboman himself.

@ JigokuIt wasn't directed at you specifically, but at the last 4 posts in general. Real Life Issues tend to occur more frequently as life goes on and projects get postponed, only partly completed or even cancelled. Turboman wasn't in the habit of announcing projects which never materialised so my stance in this matter is: give the guy leeway (lots of leeway).

It's a little deeper than that. Certain players (deservedly) got to see beta versions and from what I hear it was pretty good. Those of us on the outside feel a bit...I don't know...excluded?

After all these years and all the really good support he's been given I think that allowing a beta to see usage would not hurt anything. There's like ~15 people still involved in Unreal development really. Global player count is almost always single digit. The people left are the ones *invested* in Unreal and coop play so there's no reason to not allow them to see the status of the project. Really, what's the worst case scenario? Aside from poor feedback (which seems very unlikely) there's no other valid reason not to post it.

gopostal wrote:After all these years and all the really good support he's been given I think that allowing a beta to see usage would not hurt anything. There's like ~15 people still involved in Unreal development really. Global player count is almost always single digit. The people left are the ones *invested* in Unreal and coop play so there's no reason to not allow them to see the status of the project. Really, what's the worst case scenario? Aside from poor feedback (which seems very unlikely) there's no other valid reason not to post it.

Unreal is about to reach the ending line in terms of life and with UT4 going steady on track the majority of the Unreal community has finally something new in the series to look forward to instead of sticking to ancient games. The old USP habits are a thing of the past: no more people are gonna fill a thread of posts if something cool Unreal-related happens as much as before, no more people are going to look forward to USP reviews as we all grown up and each person can form an opinion of his own on something, no one is anymore going to jump around like crazy monkeys at the first big bug and saying "DID YOU EVEN TEST THIS SHIT????" (not saying it's ok that a release is full of bugs or bad gameplay, just as long as it is playable enough without using cheats every minute - you're not releasing a game to million of people on the planet, charging for a prize, and expecting votes from official reviewers).

People just want to play something new. Give something and they will play. Release even a demo of five maps and people will be happy. Look around how almost all new games, even AAA releases, always do these beta periods so some people can try the game way before release. And when it comes to the Unreal community we're talking about a really small amount of people. It's better to release something when they're still around, not after they're all gone. Even if it'll be out I can assure you that people who's already done with Unreal will very likely not return, and those people who decide to go away have just dropped all the 10+ years hopes they had of seeing Firestorm released, which could have stayed around for more if the mappack was out at least.

Barring anything RL related the worst scenario would be releasing Firestorm when no one gives a shit anymore about Unreal, resulting in all your time put on Firestorm wasted for nothing.

Yeah this community honestly feels like it's dying, I've lurked here for around 10 years now and the things I've waited for like Firestorm, battle for na pali, the chosen one and Residual Decay.I remember waiting for those projects and being hyped, but that was 8 years ago now. And the problem is that Unreal was never that popular since it was overshadowed by Half-Life and later UT99.Mods like Black Mesa get away with taking so long is because how much a following Half-Life has and they don't have to worry about the game they're modding for to be forgotten by the passage of time like Unreal is going through right now.

I also think that right now, even if these mods were to release today, it would not receive much attention at all sadly